7.  -Ti-.^K  i 

<■  '«v 

1«  >H' 

Sl'^i^ 

John  Kelman 


There  Stood  by  the  Cross 
of  Jesus  His  Mother" 


,i;ti;'..r.w.'."iat;«! 


I 


BV42L 
■K  29139 


^There  Stood  by  the  Cross 
of  Jesus  His  Mother" 


JOHN  KELMAN 
D.D. 


fm^mmm 


,V4-2:53 

21  rs^  ■ 


'There  Stood  by  the  Cross 

of  Jesus  His  Mother"    ^^^x  of  pri 


A  SERMON 

Delivered  in  the 

Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 

New  York  City 

Good  Friday,  April   2,  1920 


V 


AUG    28 


^^OiCGlC'ri  z\ 


y 


By  the  PastOF.'tha 

REV.  JOHN  KELMAN 

D.D. 


Printed  by  the  Fifth  Avenaa  Presbyterian  Church 


Copyright  1920 
John  Kelman,  D.D. 


^There  Stood  by  the  Cross 
of  Jesus  His  Mother" 

By  Rev.  John  Kelman,  D.D. 


"There  Stood  by  the  Cross  of  Jesus  His  Mother"— John  19  :  25 


THE  cross  was  the  most  horrible  mystery  that 
ever  darkened  the  face  of  the  sun  upon  the 
earth;  the  blackest  tragedy,  human  or  divine, 
that  ever  tortured  man's  wildest  imagination.  It 
leads  us  clean  out  beyond  the  range  of  all  that  a 
man  may  think  or  say,  beyond  his  imagination  and 
beyond  his  tears,  into  a  world  in  which  no  one  can 
possibly  be  at  home.  The  homeless  dreariness  of  the 
outer  dark,  the  final  desolation  of  the  spirit,  is  upon 
Christ  and  all  who  stand  beside  Him  there;  and 
right  into  the  midst  of  it  there  comes  this  human 
touch  which  forever  relieves  it  all. 

When  Jesus  was  a  little  boy  He  used  to  climb  the 
hill  at  the  back  of  Nazareth,  far  up  among  the  moun- 
tains of  Galilee,  and  from  that  slight  eminence,  look- 
ing north  in  the  clear  morning  or  evening  light,  He 
saw  the  far-flung  white  line  of  the  great  road  that  ran 
from  Ptolemais  (Acre)  on  the  Mediterranean  to  the 
Furthest  East.  He  saw  long  strings  of  camels, 
swinging  along,  with  their  burdens  of  spices  and  rich 
cloths  of  silk  and  gold,  from  the  East  to  the  west- 
ern markets,  passing  other  trains  of  camels  equally 
long  which  bore  from  the  Phenician  seaports  of 
Tyre  and  Sidon  the  whole  merchandise  of  the  Medi- 
terranean to  the  distant  Eastern  bazaars.  On  a  frosty 

3 


morning  He  might  hear,  down  to  the  south  of  Him, 
the  clank  of  iron  upon  stone,  when  the  Roman  gar- 
rison changed  guard,  or  when  a  centurion  marched 
his  company  along  the  Roman  paved  road  that  con- 
nected Capernaum  with  the  Sea.  That  was  far  be- 
low Him  on  the  level  plain  of  Esdraelon,  a  plain 
whose  very  color  suggested  blood,  and  which  even  in 
His  day  was  the  most  famous  battleground  in* all  the 
world.  In  this  way  we  see  how,  even  at  Nazareth 
from  His  earliest  childhood.  He  was  hemmed  in,  as 
it  were,  by  the  ideals  of  the  world's  merchandise  and 
the  world's  militarism — by  commerce  and  by  war. 

Now,  while  He  was  dying  (if  indeed  the  site  of 
Calvary  be  that  to  which  popular  imagination  has 
turned  of  late),  there  were  on  either  side  of  the  little 
hill  two  great  roads  leading  northward  out  of  Jerusa- 
lem. On  the  northern  side  of  the  hill  they  joined 
and  became  one,  but  Calvary  separated  their  branches. 
Again,  one  was  the  road  of  commerce,  while  the 
other  was  reserved  for  the  march  of  soldiers.  It 
was  as  if  those  great  jaws  of  commerce  and  of  war, 
between  which  Nazareth  lay  in  His  childhood,  had 
closed  in  upon  Him  now  in  His  latest  hour  like  some 
mighty  vice.  The  things  that  had  troubled  His  child- 
hood and  perplexed  it  were  now  crucifying  Him. 
The  commerce  and  the  warfare  of  the  world,  its 
financial  and  its  military  glories,  were  murdering 
Him  Whom  in  His  childhood  they  had  astonished. 
Thus  the  thoughts  of  Nazareth  linked  themselves  on 
with  the  facts  of  Calvary,  and  He  understood  the 
weird  development  of  His  life  in  terms  of  these  two 
roads. 


But  when  Mary  came  and  stood  before  that  low 
cross  of  His,  she  brought  to  His  dying  heart  an- 
other set  of  memories  from  Nazareth.  There,  when 
He  was  a  very  Httle  boy,  before  even  the  two  roads 
had  got  upon  His  imagination,  He  had  gone  daily  to 
the  village  well,  hand  in  hand  with  her.  Now  that 
she  came  back  to  Him  in  His  last  hour,  the  tender- 
ness of  the  old  familiarity  returned  to  temper  the 
agony  of  His  crucifixion,  and  to  give  to  Him  in  His 
loneliness  a  gentle  companion.  She  too  was  there, 
caught  like  Himself  between  the  great  jaws  of  mili- 
tary and  commercial  cruelty,  whose  vice-like  grasp 
was  slaying  Him.  She  was  there.  And  as  His  dying 
eyes  closed  in  weariness  He  could  feel  again  the 
touch  of  her  hand  in  His,  and  tread  again  the  little 
pathway  to  the  village  well. 

All  this  throws  a  light  of  its  own  upon  the  mean- 
ing of  this  awful  yet  familiar  scene.  Mary  is  not 
merely  the  one  woman  who  was  so  dear  to  His  child- 
hood in  the  northern  village.  She  stands  for  human 
life  and  all  its  common  love  and  sorrow.  Our  ques- 
tion, on  this  day  which  men  celebrate  as  Good 
Friday  in  every  land,  is  how  to  relate  that  common 
life  with  Calvary,  how  to  understand  the  relation  of 
the  dying  Christ  to  our  human  experience.  Let  us 
express  this  in  two  aspects. 

1.  What  Jesus  did  for  Mary. 

2.  What  Mary  did  for  Jesus. 

1.  What  Jesus  did  for  Mary.  In  thinking  of  this 
we  must  remember  that  it  was  not  Mary  alone  who 
stood  there.     (1)  All  womanhood  stood  beneath  the 

5 


cross  of  Jesus  and  found  itself  that  day.  All  its 
mystery  and  reticence,  its  shy  unexamined  and  un- 
confessed  instincts,  were  revealed  to  its  own  heart 
in  the  light  of  His  dying  love.  All  poorer  and 
cheaper  elements  dropped  away  from  it,  all  the  little- 
ness of  envy  and  jealousy  and  gossip  and  self-im- 
portance and  interference,  such  as  had  been  some- 
times associated  with  other  incidents,  in  her  life, 
these  dropped  away.  Only  love  was  left,  the  deepest 
thing  and  the  most  precious  in  all  the  world,  the 
love  of  a  woman's  heart.  Looking  back  from  what- 
ever future  day  upon  that  scene,  she  saw  her  true 
self  there  without  any  of  life's  alloy  upon  it,  in  a 
constant  vision  that  nothing  in  all  the  remaining  years 
could  ever  change.  She  saw  herself  as  she  stood  at 
His  cross.  She,  Mary  of  Nazareth,  literally  found 
herself  that  day.  Henceforth  the  only  thing  that  was 
worth  striving  for  was  that  which  she  had  discov- 
ered in  herself  then.  As  she  stood  then  so  must  she 
try  to  be  to  the  end  of  her  earthly  life,  a  spirit 
named  and  known  only  by  its  loyalty  and  its  love,  a 
woman's  heart  set  in  the  holy  place  where  all  meaner 
things  had  fallen  away  from  it.  This  she  must  ever 
strive  to  be. 

What  more  than  this  could  Jesus  have  done  for 
Mary  or  for  womanhood?  What  greater  gift  could 
He  have  given  to  us  all  than  to"  strip  from  us  every- 
thing that  could  make  us  ashamed  to  look  back  ?  To- 
day we  too  stand  at  the  cross  and  discover  our  real 
selves.  No  meaner  or  poorer  element  has  any  place 
here,  and  we  gladly  let  all  such  things  drop  away 
from  us.    Henceforth  we  shall  remember  ourselves 

6 


at  our  very  best,  in  the  character  that  we  dared  un- 
ashamed to  bring  to  Calvary.  We  shall  cherish  that 
as  our  true  heritage  of  life,  the  ideal  of  us  which 
it  is  life's  whole  business  to  change  into  the  real. 

(2)  All  bereavement  stood  there  and  found  it- 
self. For  bereavement  also  has  its  meaner  side. 
We  all  know  how  sore  a  trial  it  puts  upon  character. 
There  is  the  sudden,  disintegrating  shock;  the  des- 
perate, vain  rebellion ;  the  slowly  growing  persuasion 
that  life  is  over  and  done  with  now ;  the  sense  of 
one's  heart  withering  into  deadness;  the  tasteless 
duties  that  weary  the  spirit  without  interesting  or 
exciting  it.  Occasional  longings  of  the  stricken  heart 
break  into  feverish  and  intermittent  passion,  and  are 
succeeded  by  a  recoil  that  sends  us  back  into  a  mood 
in  which  nothing  seems  to  be  worth  while. 

All  this  Mary  brought  to  Jesus  as  He  hung  there 
upon  His  cross,  and  His  love  for  her  shows  most 
tender  and  pathetic  in  the  simplicity  of  His  consid- 
eration, and  the  fullness  of  His  understanding  of 
these  commonplace  elements  in  sorrow.  His  love 
restored  for  her  the  balance  of  things  and  of  their 
values.  The  thought  of  that  most  desperate  hour 
henceforth  and  forever  would  have  His  love — His 
simple,  understanding  love — as  part  of  its  meaning. 
So  the  savorless  life  regained  its  interest  and  its 
poignancy,  not  in  itself  but  for  His  sake  Who  had 
met  her  there.  The  eyes  of  Jesus  will  haunt  the 
loneliness  of  this  woman's  life,  and  her  sorrow  will 
be  taken  up  with  her  love  of  Him,  into  the  divine 
and  eternal  life  in  which  she  also  shall  have  part. 

Thus,  in  the  person  of  Mary,  there  stood  beneath 


the  cross  of  Jesus  all  human  love  and  all  human  sor- 
row on  that  strange  day.  As  they  stood  then  before 
Him,  He  let  the  power  of  His  cross  play  full  upon 
them,  the  power  of  His  dying  love.  None  of  them 
can  ever  be  secular  again,  however  much  it  may  have 
seemed  God- forsaken  in  the  past.  Both  love  and  sor- 
row have  seemed  to  divide  our  hearts  many  times 
from  their  allegiance  to  holy  things,  but  this  can 
never  be  again.  These  also  are  holy,  and  we  shall 
not  slander  them  any  more  by  calling  them  common, 
far  less  unclean.  Thus  a  new  holiness  falls  upon  our 
earthly  love  and  sorrow,  as  if  some  rays  of  light 
from  the  dwelling-place  of  angels  had  penetrated 
to  them  and  transformed  them.  Thus  all  our  human 
experience  is  measured  by  the  cross.  The  cross  is 
indeed  the  measure  of  the  world,  and  it  tells  us  that 
these  ordinary  things — the  love  of  fellow-mortals,  the 
loyalty  to  friends,  the  grief  that  breaks  our  hearts — 
these  things  are  bigger  and  holier  and  grander  than 
we  had  ever  taken  them  for.  As  we  walk  among 
them  once  again,  a  new  reverence  for  the  common 
life  of  the  world  will  come  upon  us,  and  a  new 
sacredness  in  quiet  days  and  hours.  This  is  what 
Jesus  did  for  Mary. 

2.  What  Mary  did  for  Jesus.  Of  course  the 
thing  that  brought  her  there  primarily  was  just  what 
every  woman  knows,  a  passionate  longing  to  be  of 
use  to  the  suffering  and  the  dying.  She  little  dreamed 
of  how  much  use  she  was.  Did  you  ever  think  of 
the  dire  temptation  that  the  cross  of  Calvary  must 
have  brought  to  Christ  ?    The  early  temptations  were 

8 


but  child's  play  compared  to  this.  Think  of  that 
pure  soul  with  all  the  fastidiousness  of  God  in  it, 
the  moral  fastidiousness  to  which  sin  is  pain  and 
defilement,  nailed  up  against  the  filthy  tree  of  sin. 
The  treachery  of  traitors,  the  stupid  barbarity  of 
foreigners,  the  cowardice  of  friends,  surrounded 
Him.  He  was  crucified  among  hypocrites  and 
thieves,  among  shouting  fools  and  pagan  soldiers. 

There  must  have  been  two  ways  in  which  the  temp- 
ter thrust  sore  at  Him  that  day,  and  the  fate  of  the 
world  hung  upon  His  treatment  of  these.  First,  He 
might  easily  have  become  embittered.  Impatience  and 
discouragement  might  well  have  led  to  a  sense  of  dis- 
illusionment which  would  have  repudiated  all  that 
had  gone  before  it  leading  to  the  cross.  Was  it  in- 
deed for  this  that  He  had  lived  and  been  ready  to  die 
—for  this  ?  It  is  hardly  possible  that  He  could  have 
escaped,  in  the  agony  of  His  flesh,  some  temptation 
to  surrender  His  life-long  hope  and  faith  in  men.  So 
He  might  have  confessed  that,  after  all,  the  world 
with  its  sin  was  conqueror ;  and  that  His  dreams  and 
ideals  had  gone  down  the  stream  of  that  black  flood 
of  failure  and  perdition  which  was  now  pouring  over 
its  final  cataract  into  defeat  and  death.  So  He  might 
have  crept  into  death,  defeated  and  a  conscious 
failure. 

Or,  on  the  other  hand.  He  might  have  been  simply 
angry,  and  He  would  have  "done  well  to  be  angry." 
It  would  have  been  a  righteous  anger  that  indig- 
nantly scorned  a  world  so  unfit  for  Him.  Who  could 
have  complained  if  He  had  drawn  off  in  resentment 
from  this  most  outrageous  act  of  mankind  ?    He  had 


nothing  in  common  with  so  desperate  a  world.  Let 
Him  proudly  gather  His  robe  about  Him,  and  with- 
draw, and  leave  it  to  its  fate.  That  may  have  been 
implied  in  the  words  He  Himself  has  told  us,  show- 
ing that  it  had  actually  occurred  to  Him  that  He 
might  have  prayed  His  Father  and  received  as  escort 
a  guard  of  twelve  legions  of  angels,  to  protect  Him 
from  the  scorn  and  brutality  of  these  most  miserable 
of  men. 

On  the  cross  He  resisted  all  this  and  fought  it  off. 
He  believed  in  spite  of  all  the  enemies  of  faith.  He 
loved  in  spite  of  hatred,  and  forgave  the  world  with 
His  dying  breath.  Surely  we  cannot  but  believe 
that  Mary's  presence  there  helped  Him  in  that 
victory.  The  hands  that  had  caressed  Him  long 
ago  were  now  clasped  in  agony  at  His  feet.  He 
felt  again  the  touch  of  her  fingers  upon  His  mat- 
ted hair.  The  old  loyalties  and  the  simple  child- 
ish things  came  back  across  the  years  to  comfort 
Him,  and  a  touch  of  home  came  to  visit  Him  on  the 
homeless  cross.  Yes,  the  world  held  this  also — the 
mad,  raging,  wicked  world.  All  that  Nazareth  had 
ever  been  to  Him  was  still  part  of  the  truth  of  things. 
The  mother's  presence  helped  Him,  in  that  last 
deadly  struggle,  to  keep  hold  upon  His  faith  in  life. 
It  is  indeed  a  wicked  world,  yet  there  is  love  in  it, 
and  no  pure  human  heart  has  ever  loved  in  vain. 

Ah,  yes,  that  simple  human  tenderness  did  much 
for  Calvary.  But  not  only  did  it  bring  comfort  to 
Jesus  in  His  hour  of  agony :  it  brings  light  to  us  all 
in  our  interpretation  of  the  deed  that  was  done  there- 
in our  handling  of  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement 

10 


nothing  is  easier  than  to  let  it  become  a  mere  hard 
intellectual  proposition,  a  thing  of  official  relations 
and  deeds.  So  it  becomes  ghastly  and  repels  men 
who  try  to  believe  it.  It  drives  into  an  unsympa- 
thetic and  arid  theological  controversy  those  whose 
breaking  hearts  would  fain  flee  to  a  crucified  friend. 
Here  is  a  touch  which  shows  us  the  atonement  in 
the  light  of  mother-love,  a  thing  we  can  all  under- 
stand quite  well.  He,  hanging  there,  is  still  touched 
with  the  feeling  of  all  that  makes  up  life's  affections. 
All  that  we  can  find  in  His  heart  is  simply  love,  and 
the  love  that  existed  between  Him  and  His  mother 
stands  as  a  natural  type  of  all  His  love.  Herein  is 
love  indeed,  and  when  we  see  it  reflected  in  her  eyes 
we  know  it  well. 

Oh,  brothers  and  sisters,  consider  this  new  mean- 
ing in  the  cross.  The  highest  mysteries  of  our  faith 
are  very  simple  things  which  little  children  and  all 
the  hearts  that  love  can  understand,  for  in  our  de- 
gree we  know  it  by  experience.  Have  we  not  all 
been  tortured  ?  Is  there  not  a  cross  set  up  for  every- 
one of  us?  In  all  our  lives  there  is  sin,  and  the 
shame  and  remorse  of  sin  to  torment  us.  In  all  our 
love  there  is  pain  lurking  somewhere.  And  here,  in 
the  simplicity  of  this  stupendous  event,  mother  and 
Son  look  simply  into  one  another's  eyes ;  and,  as  you 
see  them,  behold,  the  sin  of  the  world  is  forgiven 
and  cast  behind  His  back.  You  see  before  your  eyes 
the  spectacle  of  love  that  has  swallowed  up  the  pain 
of  life,  and  made  pain  the  minister  of  grace,  to  en- 
throne love  upon  the  earth.  So  she  helps  us  to  make 
the  cross  an  intelligible  thing  by  making  the  love  of 

11 


Jesus  simpler.  In  a  new  certainty  we  know  Christ 
crucified.  When  we  go  down  from  this  tremendous 
spectacle  we  shall  be  able  to  take  up  our  own  cross, 
and  in  our  own  lives  to  die  daily  and  be  crucified 
with  Christ.  We  shall  learn  from  it  that  the  high- 
est secret  and  the  deepest  depth  of  life's  possible 
experience  is  just  love ;  and  that  the  loving  soul  may 
go  through  a  thousand  deaths  and  triumph  over  them 
all,  and  change  their  pain  to  peace  and  holiness  and 
everlasting  life. 


12 


hi 


BV4253 .K29T39 

There  stood  by  the  cross  of  Jesus  his 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00052  6246 


